Over the past decade, Congress has been slower to complete action on regular appropriations bills and has delayed more of them than in prior years, relying increasingly on stopgap continuing resolutions, or CRs. Bills are also increasingly rolled into large omnibus bills, rather than being passed separately. The graphic below shows the timeframe for passage of each year's appropriations bills, and gives a total delay for the year in "bill-months" — the total number of months or partial months across all bills beyond the start of the fiscal year on October 1st.